


After

by flowersforgraves



Series: hc_bingo round 8 [17]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Character Deaths Mentioned Only, Community: hc_bingo, F/F, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 20:04:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13278888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowersforgraves/pseuds/flowersforgraves
Summary: In which the survivors remember.prompt: survivor's guilt





	After

She dreams about them, sometimes. It’s the best way Isabel knows to remember them, because she can’t very well visit their families and tell them the truth.

She dreams about Fisher, and the picture of Corey he kept in the breast pocket of his duty uniform. She’s tracked down and visited his boyfriend’s place of work, though she never spoke to him. She wanted to see for herself who this young man who captured her engineer’s heart was.

She dreams about Lambert, and the copy of Pryce and Carter that was perpetually floating after him. She visited his family, the only one she actually spoke to. She didn’t tell them the truth, but what she did tell them wasn’t a lie. He was a good man, she’d said. Dedicated, loyal, and hardworking.

She dreams about Hui, and Fourier, and the way their laughter would echo through the station. They’d been close, inseparable even, and she remembers that when she drinks to their memory. It’s hard to remember one without the other, and she’s not sure that she would even want to.

She avoids thinking about Selberg-Hilbert, even in dreams. She hates him, hates what he did, hates that he didn’t live long enough to see it fail.

Reneé has nightmares, too. She dreams about Maxwell, mostly, about pulling that trigger and watching Maxwell die. Isabel knows this because it would be what she’d dream about, if their positions were reversed.

She comforts Reneé in the best way she knows how, with soft kisses and hard alcohol, with late night conversations and spending time with Doug and Hera, and maybe once in a while Jacobi too. But even in those late night talks, they don’t talk about it. They don’t talk about the blood on Reneé’s hands. They don’t talk about Isabel’s crushing guilt. They don’t talk about not knowing what happened to Kepler, or Rachel, or about what they know happened to Isabel’s original crew.

What they do is tell stories. Isabel bears witness to her crew, tells Reneé about Fisher and Lambert and Hui and Fourier. Reneé talks about the early days of the second Hephaestus mission, about the plant monster and the toothpaste siege. 

It’s rare that they share stories outside of their bedroom. But they do when Doug asks, because he’s… he’s empty, in a way that their comms officer never was before. And maybe their conversations can’t make him go back to the way things were before, but they’ll all be damned if they don’t try.

Jacobi doesn’t say much when they’re all together. Isabel’s given to understand that he doesn’t talk a lot these days at all. She does go to the trouble of helping Reneé organize a small memorial service for Maxwell, though. It’s the only time they see him cry.

Doug cracks jokes, mostly knock-knock jokes, with a few puns thrown in for good measure. They all laugh, harder than the jokes call for, but they do anyway.

It’s easier to laugh than to cry.


End file.
